The Raspberry Pi is a small, affordable single-board computer that you will use to design and develop fun and practical IoT devices while learning programming and computer hardware. In addition, you will learn how to set up up the Raspberry Pi environment, get a Linux operating system running, and write and execute some basic Python code on the Raspberry Pi. You will also learn how to use Python-based IDE (integrated development environments) for the Raspberry Pi and how to trace and debug Python code on the device. Please note that this course does not include discussion forums.

Reviews

HB

Really nice and easy introduction to Raspberry Pi and Python. I loved the part when the professor said something about Scratch, like 'we'll not use it, we're way above it'. :)

AA

Jul 20, 2019

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

As an intro course to Raspberry Pi platform it's okay. I guess the next course in the series will have assignments that are more difficult and enable us to learn more.

From the lesson

Module 2

The Raspberry Pi is typically installed with a Linux-based operating system, so we present the basics of Linux and its use. We describe some of the main features including navigating the file system and managing processes. We describe the text-based user interface through the shell and we overview the graphic user interface which is the default with the Raspian Linux distribution.

Taught By

Ian Harris

Transcript

[MUSIC] We're going to start talking about Linux now. This module is all about Linux. We need to talk about Linux because Linux is the operating system that is running on the Raspberry Pi. So when you use the Raspberry Pi you're going to be using Linux. Now most of what we're talking about is pretty much uniform for any Linux, okay? We're talking about generic commands just to know your way around the operating system so that you can use it and feel comfortable using it. A lot of what we're gonna talk about is about the text-based interface. We'll also talk about the graphic user interface, but the text-based interface is good because I can list everything that the operating system can do more easily in the text-based interface. And a lot of this can be done also in the graphic user interface. I'll show you some of that too. So let's start with the shell. Linux has a shell. A shell is basically a program that intercepts user input and executes commands. So it's just the interface. The program that reads what you type in and then outputs the results to the screen. So that's the shell. It's the text-based interface for the operating system. Now, there are many shells you can run. Lots of different shells, sh was the original shell, right, for a Unix machine. C shell, TC shell, there's a whole bunch of shells, right? The shell we're using is bash, bourne again shell. B-A-S-H, bash. That's the default one on Raspian, for instance. And on most Linuxes now, people use bourne again shell. It's the default shell, so when we open up a shell, when we start a terminal window and there's a shell running in it, it's bash shell. You might wanna know that. If you wanna do more sophisticated things later with shell scripting and stuff like that, you'll wanna know which shell you're running. Now shells, as opposed to graphic user interfaces, using the shell is, it gives you more precise control as the user. Also it's precise and complete, you can do everything out of the shell. Also for remote use, if you wanna connect to a device and use it over a network, something like that, a shell is much more convenient. Because sending the graphics information required for a GUI is slow, but also unnecessary and it requires extra work on your part. So sometimes, it's just easier to use a shell. Now, the downside of the shell is that you really need to memorize a few of these basics in order to use it efficiently. You don't wanna have to be looking up in the manual everything you wanna do. So you wanna have in your mind a set of basic commands that you just know in order to use the shell. I mean, I still look up things in the shell, but you wanna have the basic commands in your head. So a console or terminal. This is, basically it's a term, it's a text entry and display device. So it used to be physical device. So you used to have a vt100 or vt220 terminal, I had one of these in my house. It's like a screen, keyboard, and I'd connect it by a modem to the main computer. And it was my terminal or my console. Now basically, people don't usually use vt100 terminals at home anymore, usually you use virtual terminals. So virtual terminal means, that's what we'd be using, it's a window that appears on your screen which runs a shell in it. So a terminal, its whole job is to run the shell. And to run whatever the shell program is to read your input. And then send those shell commands to the operating system and get them executed. And then, take the responses and print them to the screen. So, a terminal is basically what's running the shell, or a console runs a shell. Virtual consoles are what we use, basically a window, that a shell is running in. LXTerminal is the terminal used in Raspian. The default terminal. So, there's an application called LXTerminal and you run that application. It will open a window with the terminal in it. So, from the GUI, tpically we're gonna start in the Raspian with its GUI running, and when we want a shell we can start LXTerminal and pop open a terminal. And by the way, to start there, if you setup Raspian up in the top bar, there's a little picture at top toward the left, there's a little picture of a terminal, of a screen. You click on that and that starts the terminal. It starts LXterminal. So that's how would you typically invoke a terminal from Raspian's GUI. This is what LXTerminal looks like. So, once you start it, then you get a Window that looks like this. And you can see in there, there's just a little bit of text and a prompt, $ prompt. After the prompt, you type in your commands, hit Enter. And it executes them. Thank you. [MUSIC]

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